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In France, civil servants will ditch Zoom and Teams for a homegrown video conference system. Soldiers in Austria are using open source office software to write reports after the military dropped Microsoft Office. Bureaucrats in a German state have also turned to free software for their administrative work. Around Europe, governments and institutions are seeking to reduce their use of digital services from U.S. Big Tech companies and turning to domestic or free alternatives. The push for digital sovereignty is gaining attention as the Trump administration strikes an increasingly belligerent posture toward the continent, highlighted by recent tensions over Greenland that intensified fears that Silicon Valley giants could be compelled to cut off access. Concerns about data privacy and worries that Europe is not doing enough to keep up with the United States and Chinese tech leadership are also fueling the drive. The French government referenced some of these concerns when it announced last week that 2.5 million civil servants would stop using video conference tools from U.S. providers including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and GoTo Meeting by 2027 and switch to Visio, a homegrown service. The objective is to put an end to the use of non-European solutions, to guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool, the announcement said. We cannot risk having our scientific exchanges, our sensitive data, and our strategic innovations exposed to non-European actors, David Amiel, a civil service minister, said in a press release. Microsoft said it continues to partner closely with the government in France and respect the importance of security, privacy, and digital trust for public institutions. The company said it is focused on providing customers with greater choice, stronger data protection, and resilient cloud services ensuring data stays in Europe, under European law, with robust security and privacy protections. Zoom, Webex and GoTo Meeting did not respond to requests for comment. French President Emmanuel Macron has been pushing digital sovereignty for years. But theres now a lot more political momentum behind this idea now that we need to de-risk from U.S. tech, Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. It feels kind of like theres a real zeitgeist shift, Reiners said It was a hot topic at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting of global political and business elites last month in Davos, Switzerland. The European Commission’s official for tech sovereignty, Henna Virkkunen, told an audience that Europe’s reliance on others can be weaponized against us. Thats why its so important that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to very critical fields of our economy or society, she said, without naming countries or companies. A decisive moment came last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court’s top prosecutor after the tribunal, based in The Hague, Netherlands, issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump. The sanctions led Microsoft to cancel Khan’s ICC email, a move that was first reported by The Associated Press and sparked fears of a kill switch that Big Tech companies can use to turn off service at will. Microsoft maintains it kept in touch with the ICC throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services. At no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC. Microsoft President Brad Smith has repeatedly sought to strengthen trans-Atlantic ties, the company’s press office said, and pointed to an interview he did last month with CNN in Davos in which he said that jobs, trade and investment. as well as security, would be affected by a rift over Greenland. Europe is the American tech sectors biggest market after the United States itself. It all depends on trust. Trust requires dialogue, Smith said. Other incidents have added to the movement. There’s a growing sense that repeated EU efforts to rein in tech giants such as Google with blockbuster antitrust fines and sweeping digital rule books haven’t done much to curb their dominance. Billionaire Elon Musk is also a factor. Officials worry about relying on his Starlink satellite internet system for communications in Ukraine. Washington and Brussels wrangled for years over data transfer agreements, triggered by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowdens revelations of U.S. cyber-snooping. With online services now mainly hosted in the cloud through data centers, Europeans fear that their data is vulnerable. U.S. cloud providers have responded by setting up so-called sovereign cloud operations, with data centers located in European countries, owned by European entities and with physical and remote access only for staff who are European Union residents. The idea is that only Europeans can take decisions so that they cant be coerced by the U.S., Reiners said. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein last year migrated 44,000 employee inboxes from Microsoft to an open source email program. It also switched from Microsoft’s SharePoint file sharing system to Nextcloud, an open source platform, and is even considering replacing Windows with Linux and telephones and videoconferencing with open source systems. We want to become independent of large tech companies and ensure digital sovereignty, Digitalization Minister Dirk Schrödter said in an October announcement. The French city of Lyon said last year that it’s deploying free office software to replace Microsoft. Denmarks government and the cities of Copenhagen and Aarhus have also been trying out open-source software. We must never make ourselves so dependent on so few that we can no longer act freely, Digital Minister Caroline Stage Olsen wrote on LinkedIn last year. Too much public digital infrastructure is currently tied up with very few foreign suppliers. The Austrian military said it has also switched to LibreOffice, a software package with word processor, spreadsheet and presentation programs that mirrors Microsoft 365’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The Document Foundation, a nonprofit based in Germany that’s behind LibreOffice, said the military’s switch reflects a growing demand for independence from single vendors. Reports also said the military was concerned that Microsoft was moving file storage online to the cloud the standard version of LibreOffice is not cloud-based. Some Italian cities and regions adopted the software years ago, said Italo Vignoli, a spokesman for he Document Foundation. Back then, the appeal was not needing to pay for software licenses. Now, it’s the main reason is to avoid being locked into a proprietary system. At first, it was: we will save money and by the way, we will get freedom, Vignoli said. Today it is: we will be free and by the way, we will also save some money. Kelvin Chan AP business writer Associated Press writer Molly Quell contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
The Gates Foundation will not change course in the face of massive foreign aid cuts, holding out hope that the U.S. specifically will return to funding the global health projects the foundation has long championed, its CEO said Tuesday. Instead, the foundation one of the largest in the world will concentrate at least 70% of its funding over the next 20 years on ending preventable maternal and child deaths and controlling key infectious diseases. A third goal focused on poverty will divide its work between U.S. education and agriculture in poorer countries. We are saying not only will we not be taking on new priorities, were actively narrowing our priorities against three core North Star goals, Mark Suzman said in an interview with The Associated Press as the foundation published an annual update on its plans Tuesday. In May, Bill Gates, who started the foundation with his ex-wife Melinda French Gates in 2000, announced it would close in 20 years, earlier than planned. In the letter Tuesday, Suzman gave more details about what work would end and what would continue. He also affirmed that the foundation would not rethink its plans given the cuts to foreign assistance by donor countries around the world. While these conditions will have significant repercussions for global health and development for the next few years, priorities can shift. Debt can be restructured. Generosity can return, Suzman wrote in the letter, referring also to the significant debt burden that many low- and middle-income countries carry, which eats into their public health budgets, for example. The foundation will renew its campaign for donor countries to fund global health, specifically, Suzman said, even as he acknowledged that overall funding levels were unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels. We definitely have not lost hope that the U.S. will stay engaged over the medium and longer term as a champion of global health, Suzman said. The foundation will renew its advocacy with campaigns that argue for saving the lives of pregnant women and young children. We think that is powerful and evocative, Suzman said. The U.S. has historically been the largest funder of global health. It’s not yet clear how much funding Congress and the Trump administration will ultimately allocate toward foreign assistance or global health this year, but the State Department has said foreign assistance going forward will look extremely different. This year, the U.S. refused to fund Gavi, which offers vaccinations to children around the world, but it did pledge to contribute to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, of which it has historically been the largest supporter. What Gates Foundation programs will end? The foundation will wind down its program that aimed to give more people in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia access to digital financial services, with Suzman saying they think that goal will be met by 2030. The foundation also has planned the end of its program to help people move out of poverty in the U.S., which it launched in 2022 with a $460 million commitment. In 2023, Ryan Rippel, the head of the program, said they aimed to improve economic mobility for 50 million people in the U.S. who earn 200% of the poverty level or less, which was $29,160 in annual income for an individual at the time. The foundation said it hadn’t assessed the program’s impact against that goal specifically. The economic mobility work will continue in a modified form as a partnership announced in July to develop AI tools that benefit frontline workers. For the next five years, the foundation plans to hold its budget steady, spending $9 billion annually, regardless of market changes, Suzman said. They then anticipate increasing that amount as they seek to meet Gates commitment to spend the vast remainder of his fortune through the foundation by 2045. The foundation said in January that it would cap operating expenses at 14% of its annual budget and anticipated reducing its workforce by 2030. The proposed changes were developed before the U.S. government released files on Jeffrey Epstein that include mentions of Gates and unsubstantiated claims that a spokesperson called false. Betting on AI to make big gains in multiple areas The foundation is also betting on the potential of artificial intelligence tools in other areas, including U.S. education and agriculture, where it’s funded projects delivering information like weather conditions to small farmers. While U.S. education was an early focus for Gates and French Gates, Suzman said looking back, those efforts did not deliver the desired impact. However, they think AI applications could help a large number of students, teachers and schools. In January, the foundation announced a new $50 million partnership with OpenAI’s for-profit subsidiary to develop ways for primary health clinics in Rwanda and potentially other countries to use AI to amplify the reach of health workers and improve outcomes for patients. When the foundation works with corporations, it requires them to offer what they develop without any markup to poorer countries. “Wherever possible, were looking for things that are going be interoperable and open source to allow for these very new public goods,” Suzman said, meaning users aren’t locked into working with a specific company. John Halamka, a physician and president of the Mayo Clinic Platform, who has worked at the intersection of health care and technology for many years, said these types of projects need to empower the local municipality to develop and fine tune the AI model for their population. Halamka, who has previously worked with the Gates Foundation on projects but is not involved in this initiative, sad interventions also need to meet patients at their level of comfort and trust with the technologies. How do you ensure these kinds of tools will be used, trusted, adopted?” he asked. “And what are you doing to make the population comfortable with the use of these new technologies? ___ Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the APs collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of APs philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy. Thalia Beaty, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
The internet-famous monks that have captured the attention of the world on their cross-country “walk for peace” are in the final stretch of their 2,300-mile journey. The group of around 19 Buddhist monks and their rescue dog companion, Aloka, have been trekking from Fort Worth, Texas, to Washington, D.C., to promote world peace. They began their walk on October 26, 2025. The journey was expected to take 120 days. Despite the recent frigid temperatures and snow storms, theyre ahead of schedule. According to a recent post on the groups Facebook page, they plan to arrive in Washington, D.C., one week from today, Tuesday, February 10, 2026. While the exact route and schedule could change, the current pace has them completing the journey in 108 days. On February 2, 2026the 100th day of their walkthe monks arrived in Richmond, Virginia. Today, theyre making their way from Richmond to Ashland, Virginia. Their Facebook page notes that they are walking to raise awareness of inner peace and mindfulness across America and the world. The movement has drawn widespread positive attention. Massive crowds of supporters have gathered to welcome the monks as they make their way to each planned stop along their route. The final stretch: Less than 100 miles left to walk The monks shared their most current schedule on Facebook. Heres what to expect: February 10, 2026: The monks will visit the Washington National Cathedral. February 11, 2026: The group will host a meditation retreat in the afternoon and evening. February 12, 2026: The monks will depart Washington, D.C., by bus for Fort Worth, Texas. The post read, We look forward to welcoming everyone with open hearts as we complete this peaceful journey together. Your presence would be a blessing and a gift to us all. More details will be made available as they are confirmed. If you want to stay up to date on the group’s whereabouts, check their Facebook page. They share updates about their daily route. You can also track their progress each day in this live interactive map. Over 5 million followers are feeling inspired by the movement The moments message of hope and peace has been well-received. Millions of people worldwide have been following the Walk for Peace movement through social media. Every social media post is flooded with positive comments from well-wishers. The monks have attracted a large social media presence that continues to grow. Since January 2, 2026, the Walk for Peace Facebook page has grown from 575,000 to 2.5 million followers. The Walk for Peace Instagram account, which had 618,000 followers, now has 1.8 million. The groups rescue dog, Aloka, has also attracted a massive social media following. The Aloka The Peace Dog Facebook page is nearing one million followers. In mid-January, Aloka had to have surgery to heal a leg injury. Hes doing well, but since hes still recovering, and has been traveling in an escort car that follows the walking route along with the monks.
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E-Commerce
Bullied and buffeted by President Donald Trumps tariffs for the past year, Americas longstanding allies are desperately seeking ways to shield themselves from the presidents impulsive wrath. U.S. trade partners are cutting deals among themselves sometimes discarding old differences to do so in a push to diversify their economies away from a newly protectionist United States. Some European governments and institutions are reducing their use of U.S. digital services such as Zoom and Teams. Central banks and global investors are dumping dollars and buying gold. Together, their actions could diminish U.S. influence and mean higher interest rates and prices for Americans already angry about the high cost of living. Last summer and fall, Trump used the threat of punishing taxes on imports to strong-arm the European Union, Japan, South Korea, and other trading partners into accepting lopsided trade deals and promising to make massive investments in the United States. But a deal with Trump, theyve discovered, is no deal at all. The mercurial president repeatedly finds reasons to conjure new tariffs to impose on trading partners that thought they had already made enough concessions to satisfy him. Just months after reaching his agreement with the EU, Trump threatened new tariffs on eight European countries for opposing his attempts to seize control of Greenland from Denmarkthough he quickly backed down. And last month, he said hed slap 100% tariffs on Canada for breaking with the United States by agreeing to reduce Canadian tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. Our trading partners are discovering that the largely one-sided deals they concluded with the U.S. provide little protection, said former U.S. trade negotiator Wendy Cutler, senior vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute. As a result, trade diversification efforts by our partners are on turbo charge, looking to reduce dependence on the U.S.” Trump supporters such as Paul Winfree, who was deputy director of the White House Domestic Policy Council during Trumps first term, are wary of the relative decline in U.S. Treasury note holdings by foreign central banks and view the national debt as a vulnerability rivals would like to exploit. Winfree, CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Institute, a think tank, said that some of Trump’s advisers do not feel America has fully benefited from the dollar’s status as the world’s dominant currency. But the fact remains that every other country is jealous of our status, and many of our adversaries would love to challenge the U.S. dollar and Treasuries, he said. White House spokesman Kush Desai insists America’s standing on the global stage has not been diminished. President Trump remains committed to the strength and power of the U.S. Dollar as the worlds reserve currency,” he said. India and the EU clinch a long-awaited deal The most eye-opening deal so far has been the pact announced last week between the 27-country EU and India, the worlds fastest growing major economy. Negotiators had been at it for nearly two decades before they closed the agreement. Likewise, an EU trade deal announced two weeks ago with the Mercosur nations of South America took a quarter century of negotiation. It will create a free-trade market of more than 700 million people. Some of these deals have been in the works for quite some time, said Maurice Obstfeld, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund. The pressure from Trump made them more eager to accelerate the process and reach agreement. EU exporters were jubilant over the India deal. VDMA, a group of European machinery and plant engineering companies, welcomed lower Indian tariffs on machinery. The free trade agreement between India and the EU brings much needed oxygen to a world increasingly dominated by trade conflicts, VDMAs executive director, Thilo Brodtmann, said in a statement. With this agreement, Europe is sending a clear signal in favor of rules-based trade and against the law of the jungle. ‘We have all the cards On Monday, Trump went on social media to announce his own deal with India. The U.S., he posted, would reduce tariffs on Indian imports after India agreed to stop buying oil from Russia, which has used the sales to fund its four year war in Ukraine. The president said that India would reduce its tariffs on American products to zero and buy $500 billion worth of American products. Trade lawyer Ryan Majerus, a partner at the King & Spalding and a trade official in the Biden administration and during Trump’s first term, said that businesses and legal analysts were awaiting official White House documents spelling out details of the deal. Trump is banking on there being limits to other countries ability to pull away from the United States. America has the worlds biggest economy and consumer market. We have all the cards, Trump told Fox Business this month. Countries like South Korea, dependent on Americas market and military protection, cant afford to ignore Trumps threats. On Monday, for example, the president said he was increasing tariffs on South Korea goods because the countrys legislature has been slow to approve the trade framework announced last year. On Tuesday, the countrys Finance Ministry responded by saying its chief, Koo Yun-cheol, would push lawmakers to quickly approve a bill to invest $350 billion as promised in the agreement. “The U.S was trying to identify a counterpart that would find it difficult to refuse U.S. demands outright, given the depth of its economic and security ties, said Cha Du Hyeogn, an analyst at South Koreas Asan Institute for Policy Studies. Or consider Canada, which sends 75% of its exports to its southern neighbor. Canada and U.S. will always be tightly linked through international trade, said Obstfeld, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Were talking about adjustments more or less on the margin. But the worlds growing rejection of Trumps policies is already having an impact, driving down the value of the dollar, long the currency of choice for global commerce, to its lowest level since 2022 last week versus several competing currencies. Syracuse University political scientist Daniel McDowell, author of the book Bucking the Buck: U.S. Financial Sanctions and the International Backlash against the Dollar, sees a vibe shift under Trump: Foreign countries and investors want to reduce their exposure to the United States, which has moved from a source of security and stability to a driver of instability and unpredictability under Trump. Trump has shown that he is willing to use foreign countries economic dependence on the U.S. as leverage against them in negotiations, McDowell said. As global perceptions of the US are changing, it is only natural that investors public and private alike are reconsidering their relationship with the dollar. Paul Wiseman, Josh Boak and Elaine Kurtenbach, Associated Press Associated Press videographer Yong Jun Chang and AP Business Writer Kelvin Chan contributed to this report.
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E-Commerce
Disney earnings are out, and by the looks of it, the entertainment giant is starting 2026 with some strong points in its first-quarter report, powered in part by two big hits at the box office. However, some disappointing news looking ahead to the second quarter may have spooked investors, causing shares of the stock to slide over 7% to $104.72 in afternoon trading on Monday. Shares of the Walt Disney Company (DIS) were up briefly on Tuesday morning after news that Disney named Josh D’Amaro as its new chief executive officer (starting March 18), but were back down by another half a percent to $103.99 in afternoon trading on Tuesday at the time of this writing. First, the good news: Disney’s first quarter earnings beat estimates with revenue coming in at $25.98 billion, above analyst expectations of $25.74 billion; and higher-than-expected earnings per share (EPS) of $1.63 adjusted, 6 cents above Wall Street estimates of $1.57. That’s due in large part to the entertainment giant’s experiences unit, which operates 12 theme parks across six global resorts, along with cruises and vacation clubs, which reported more than $10 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time. It also got a nice boost from Disney’s studios box office blockbuster releases Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash,” that each surpassed $1 billion at the global box office, according to Disney’s earnings report. The company also highlighted its streaming services, and said sports channel ESPN delivered strong quarterly ratings. (“ESPN capturing more than 30% of all sports viewership across networks, including ESPN on ABC.”) Now the bad news: Disney cautioned that looking ahead to its second quarter, it forecasts that its theme parks will likely see “modest operating income growth” due in part to the decline in visits from international tourists to the U.S., the Associate Press reported. In answer to a question on Monday’s earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger said “because international visitors tend to stay in Disney hotels less “the company was “able to read it from other indicators” and as a result “pivoted marketing and sales efforts… to a more domestic audience and we are able to keep attendance rates high.” That overall drop in foreign tourism to the U.S. could likely be the result of a few different factors, including President Donald Trumps crackdown on immigration; his administration’s aggressive stance toward foreign countriesincluding our close European allies and Canadaover the U.S. invasion of Venezuela and push to take over Greenland; and his high tariffs on global nations, often accompanied by anti-foreigner rhetoric.
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E-Commerce
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